Rotational Bands in the Doubly Magic Nucleus 56Ni

Structures of the medium- to high-spin states in the doubly magic nucleus Ni-56 have been investigated using the reaction Si-28(Ar-36, 2 alpha) and the gamma-ray spectrometer Gammasphere in conjunction with the 4 pi charged-particle detector array Microball. Two well-deformed rotational bands have been identified. There is evidence that one of the bands, which is identical to a sequence in the odd-odd neighbor Cu-58, partially decays via proton emission into the ground state of Co-55. Predictions of extensive large-scale shell-model and cranked Hartree-Fock and Hartree-Fock-Bogolyubov calculations are compared with the experimental data.